The oldest-known stick insect to mimic a plant has been discovered in China.
The newly-discovered species, a distant, extinct relative of living stick insects, lived 126 million years ago, according to a recently released study.
Scientists said the imposter most likely used its leaflike appearance to hide from predators that ate insects, said study co-author Olivier Béthoux, a paleontologist at the Center of Paleobiodiversity and Paleoenvironment Research (CR2P) at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
The ancient insect lived during the early Cretaceous period and experts now believe that it was one of the early descendants of modern stick insects.
The insect was found in Liaoning province in northeastern China, and has been named Cretophasmomima melanogramma.
Both male and female specimens were discovered in the same layer in the formation, which is unusal, according to Béthoux.
"But afterwards, I realized there was something interesting about the coloration pattern of the wings," he said to Live Science.
Female Cretophasmomima melanogramma were estimated to be around 5.5cm long and the males were a little smaller, according to the study.
Their findings were published in the online journal PLOS ONE.
The insect sported wings with dark, thin, parallel lines threading through them, according to the study.
"Fossil species that can be conclusively identified as stem-relatives of stick- and leaf-insects (Phasmatodea) are extremely rare, especially for the Mesozoic era," the study reads. "This dearth in the paleontological record makes assessments on the origin and age of the group problematic and impedes investigations of evolutionary key aspects, such as wing development, sexual size dimorphism and plant mimicry."
Released photographs showed that the plant had similar shaped leaves marked with multiple lines.
"As early as in the Early Cretaceous, some stem-Phasmatodea achieved effective leaf mimicry," the study says. "The diversification of small-sized arboreal insectivore birds and mammals might have triggered the acquisition of such primary defenses."
There are approximately 3,200 known species of stick and leaf insects, which are all members of the Phasmatodea order, according to the study.
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